Eliadis: Religious discrimination violates Canada's treaty obligations

François Legault may be able to override Charter rights, but not the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  


https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-religious-discrimination-violates-canadas-treaty-obligations?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR03mJXSSIKdGhkVIDQpg4f45EwAxRnPYLJCSFRSvo7SVgQ9uoGnjmUpal0#Echobox=1539186071


Canada’s approach to fundamental rights has evolved over the years through a healthy dialogue between courts and legislatures. The courts remain an essential interlocutor in that dialogue. As Kent Roach, a University of Toronto professor and one of Canada’s leading legal minds, once pointed out, an important reason for the court’s distinct role is that “an elected institution has an incentive to minimize and even trivialize the rights of the truly unpopular.”

Quebec nationalism could once claim to be colour- and country-blind. Not anymore

Pining for European immigrants would be quite a statement from any politician. From Legault, it is gobsmacking

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/quebec-nationalism-1.4996280

Quebec's nationalist movement, we're often assured, doesn't see skin tone or care from where you hail. It wants only to hear you speak French. "[A]ssociating Quebec nationalism with race is a mistake. Quebecers/French Canadians have never identified themselves by the colour of their skin," wrote former Stephen Harper press secretary Carl Vallée on Twitter last July.

Vallée was responding to something I'd written for the Guardian, in which I pointed out how Quebec's nationalist movement had become progressively older, whiter and less tolerant as it aged. The piece prompted much umbrage and the usual howls of Quebec bashing and the like. Vallée's response was probably the politest and certainly the most earnest. He seemed genuinely hurt that anyone would ever think such a thing.

And then last week, on his first official visit to France, Quebec Premier François Legault ripped the scab off Vallée's conceit. "Currently, there are too many immigrants in Quebec who aren't qualified or who don't speak French. So, we'd take more people from France, as well as more Europeans," Legault said in an interview with Le Devoir.

Brent Tyler taking sign-law battle to UN Human Rights Committee

The Montreal lawyer said he sees the Supreme Court refusal to hear his appeal as a fear of wading into the Quebec language debate.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/brent-tyler-taking-sign-law-battle-to-un-human-rights-committee

The Supreme Court has refused to hear his appeal, but lawyer Brent Tyler vowed to continue his legal challenge against Quebec’s sign law.

“It’s Round 7, and it’s a 15-round fight,” Tyler told reporters at his law offices Thursday.
Tyler was representing 24 businesses that were prosecuted for violating the French language charter in between 1998 and 2001. In each of the cases, the lettering of English-language words was equal to the size of the French words. Tyler argues that it’s a violation of freedom of expression to tell people that the French language must be predominant on signs that they use on their businesses.

Editorial: Bill 21's passage a sad and shameful day for Quebec

One can only hope — even pray — that this odious law will one day be reversed. In the meantime, minorities in Quebec are in for rough days.  

https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-bill-21s-passage-a-sad-and-shameful-day-for-quebec?fbclid=IwAR0Xb-I0V4BwInj4OCyuLx0UwNvpvlPUiyFZR8Rc6Amd52ga64JVUnGDHiI
Premier François Legault has suggested that the passage of Bill 21 by the National Assembly will restore Quebecers’ pride.
That’s an astounding statement, on many levels.
To start with, Legault couldn’t have been thinking of the Quebecers whose religious freedoms his government has just constrained needlessly. Few among them will be feeling a pride in their province today. More likely, they will be feeling deep sadness and disappointment, even a sense of betrayal. No longer is speaking French enough to be able to participate fully in this society. Nor will acquitting one’s professional duties with proper neutrality be sufficient. Now, conformity in appearance will also be required. Those whose practice of religion includes the wearing of so-called religious symbols will effectively be barred from certain public-sector jobs ...

Macfarlane: Quebec law banning niqab and burka is neither neutral nor constitutional

http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/quebec-neutrality-law-1.4360942

The Quebec National Assembly has passed Bill 62, legislation introduced by the Liberal government that bans public workers and anyone receiving public services from wearing the niqab or any other face covering.

Although it is described as imposing a duty of religious neutrality on public servants and people using government services, the new law is neither neutral nor constitutional. It is impossible to reconcile this law as anything other than the targeting of a minority group, a slightly narrower spin on the now perennial Quebec debate over the wearing of (non-Catholic) religious identifiers.  

Much like past proposals by the former Parti Québécois government under Pauline Marois, the law here is defended on the grounds of Quebec secularism, but it is a perversion of secularism, which would normally see the state refuse to adopt or sanction particular religions over others. Instead, the version of secularism to which Quebec's political class seems to adhere is simply anti-religion, and more specifically, religions not reflected by the giant cross hanging in the National Assembly ...

CAQ election was more 'desire for change' than green light for party ideas, study says

The October 2018 election was considered historic because it put a new party, the Coaltion Avenir Québec in office for the first time. Since then the CAQ has been proceeding full throttle with putting its plan in place, saying voters gave them a strong mandate. Turns out, many voters knew little about what the CAQ was proposing and only wanted change.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/caq-election-was-more-desire-for-change-than-green-light-for-party-ideas-study-says
QUEBEC — A new study indicates the October election of the Coalition Avenir Québec government was more driven by Quebecers’ desire for change than an endorsement of the party’s often controversial vision and policies.

In fact, the study concludes, 40 per cent of Quebecers who voted CAQ today oppose the new government’s plans to slash immigration levels by 20 per cent even though the CAQ repeatedly says it thinks it has a strong electoral mandate to proceed.

The study, published Thursday in the web magazine Policy Options, operated by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, includes fresh poll data produced by the Ipsos firm.

Quebec passes bill banning public servants from wearing religious symbols

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebec-legislature-expected-to-pass-bill-21-late-sunday/?fbclid=IwAR1jr_PhUFoIbACmC8V-2bHG4UIr0p-yJyG_4loEQgrtB3UXJebOjdi2nek

François Legault’s government passed a ban on some public servants wearing religious symbols in a final vote late Sunday night, enshrining into law a measure decried by opposition parties, minority groups and human-rights observers as an affront to personal liberty.

The National Assembly debated Bill 21 under closure in a marathon special weekend session that ended with Mr. Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government forcing passage of the law by a 73-35 vote, with backing of the Parti Québécois. Earlier Sunday, the CAQ used its majority to push through Bill 9, a law that enables new French-language and values tests that the government says will protect Quebec identity while refocusing immigration on economic interests.

The weekend in the legislature was marked by acrimony reflective of the debate that has roiled Quebec for more than 10 years over the place of religious minorities in the province. Some exhausted MNAs cursed at each other, others said they were on the verge of tears at times.

Philosophy Department Statement on Bill 21

http://www.concordia.ca/artsci/philosophy/news/Bill21Statement.html?fbclid=IwAR27WQ-fe36TtyDEPwMVgUPYOkVVCL5XVJQfFqCUt0YQN4GyjzWNK7LQdVQ

Concordia University and other universities in Québec and Canada are working to make our research, teaching—and society—more equitable, diverse, and inclusive.

Dialogue across diverse perspectives is needed for knowledge, learning, science, and democracy itself. This need is especially felt in philosophy, where key contributions have been made by outcasts and outsiders, where members of minorities have opened important areas of study, from feminist philosophy, to philosophy of race, and more.

Québec’s recently tabled Bill 21, An Act respecting the laicity of the State 21,  runs counter to these advances, including Québéc’s own advances in inclusive democracy. Laïcité is a crucial feature of political life and democracy in Québec. But it is not under threat by any dominating religious authority of power. Here, now, dress that symbolizes a person’s religious belief or identity is simply that—it poses no threat to läicité as a shared principle. There is no need to regulate dress for us to live together in our democratic society.

Francophone groups outside Quebec support EMSB's fight to keep schools

Minority francophone groups outside Quebec say they are ready to create a common front to help the English Montreal School Board keep its schools.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/francophone-groups-outside-quebec-support-emsbs-fight-to-keep-schools?fbclid=IwAR1yuE5DDoiHwZai8X9PryvplIZMotvV-p9Lq4m3RN0oHbMIuuR9EpIrND4

Minority francophone groups outside Quebec say they are ready to create a common front to help the English Montreal School Board keep its schools.

Citing a desperate need for class space in its francophone school system, Quebec Education Minister Jean-François Roberge decided to transfer two English-language EMSB schools to the Pointe-de-l’Île school commission, one less than had been originally planned.

Geoffrey Chambers, head of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), has said the decision is an assault on the linguistic rights of anglophones in the province and that the Legault government should have negotiated longer before imposing the decision by ministerial decree.

Qu'est-ce qui nous distingue, au juste ?

https://www.lapresse.ca/debats/chroniques/francis-vailles/201906/23/01-5231414-quest-ce-qui-nous-distingue-au-juste-.php?fbclid=IwAR16w70GzzQwuaXwKonhmiM1HjuHuNkg7K5xxnK__Ark1JDW889ZUTl9a1Q

La question identitaire a toujours été importante au Québec, en raison de notre statut minoritaire en Amérique. Mais aujourd'hui, en 2019, qu'est-ce qui fait notre spécificité, comme peuple ? Comment les Québécois se distinguent-ils ?

Ne sommes-nous pas, au fond, qu'une masse d'individus sans autres points communs que notre propension à consommer, à manger, à nous déplacer ? Des Nord-Américains parlant français ? Les Québécois ont-ils une âme qui leur est propre ?

Il y a trois semaines, lors d'une conférence à Québec, l'universitaire anglais Paul Collier, de l'Université Oxford, est venu dire la grande importance pour une société de se définir des valeurs partagées, communes, gages de cohésion sociale et de prospérité économique. Surtout en cette ère où les immigrants sont de plus en plus nombreux à se joindre au noyau de la communauté, et où il y a un clivage entre les villes et les régions, à bien des égards.